George R.R. Martin is not a fan of Hollywood making extensive changes when adapting books to movies.
George R.R. Martin Criticises Hollywood for Making Changes to Book Adaptions
Martin was at New York City’s Symphony Space for an event with Neil Gaiman and did not hold back his critique of Hollywood of film adaptions of books.
“How faithful do you have to be? Some people don’t feel that they have to be faithful at all.,” Martin said. “There’s this phrase that goes around: ‘I’m going to make it my own.’ I hate that phrase.”
Martin went on to say “There are changes that you have to make — or that you’re called upon to make — that I think are legitimate. And there are other ones that are not legitimate.”
The Game of Thrones show adapted Martin’s books A Song of Ice and Fire and only diverged only when they ran out of source material. They were respectable to Martin’s books and we saw what happened when they tried to implement new ideas that Martin didn’t have much say in.
Besides writing books, Martin has also worked on television shows and had to adapt books. He was asked to make changes to the stories he had to adapt such the works of Roger Zelazyny for The Twilight Zone.
When asked about these changes he had to make, Martin replied “I was new to Hollywood. I didn’t say, ‘You’re f***ing morons.’
House of the Dragon
Recently, Martin’s book Fire and Blood was adapted for HBO’s House of the Dragon which Martin is a co-creator of. The show was a massive success and proved that a good adaption leads to a great show. With better CGI and writers that are fans of the source material, the show can fix the mistakes of Game of Thrones and create a show that surpasses it predecessor.
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